


The Price of Loyalty

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [157]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pirate, Betrayal, M/M, Prisoner Steve Rogers, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16153034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: There are no secrets onboard a ship.





	The Price of Loyalty

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Pirate AU. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

There are no secrets onboard a ship. There can’t be; too little space and too many eyes and not a lick of privacy for any man, be he a youngblood or an old hand or even the captain himself. It was a lesson that James Buchanan Barnes, captain of the _Fidélité_ , had long ago taken to heart. After fifteen years at sea, half of his lifetime, he knew better than most that the sea had a knack for stripping down a man and exposing both what was best in him and all that he lacked. There was nothing about him that his crew did not know, whether they had asked for the knowledge or not, and in truth, it had been a long time since he’d even given thought to the notion of trying to keep something to himself that, when it happened, he found himself quite at a loss.

It was the prisoner’s fault.

Rogers, his name was; formerly a captain like Barnes himself. Blond of beard and blue of eye, he was easy to look at, and, Barnes imagined, likely much more pleasant company than when he was locked below decks in a cell not three paces across.

“Well, well, captain,” Barnes said the morning after Rogers’ capture. “It seems you picked the wrong men.”

He stood in front of Rogers’ cell, such as it was, a hastily constructed cage fashioned from a space they kept the perishables in, when they had such luxuries aboard. They’d been at sea for three months, though, and the fresh food and meat was long gone, and so, in frenzy of the night before, within the unexpected roar of battle, when Rogers was hauled aboard half-drowned but very much, to the ship’s doctor’s shock, alive, Barnes had ordered him concealed here until the sun rose. No reason to go to too much trouble when it hadn’t been clear that the man would survive the night.

But he had, well enough at least to stand on the other side of the bars and glare at Barnes with those storm-roiled eyes.

“If my men betrayed me,” Rogers said, his voice rough with tired and salt, “it was because they were seduced. What is the price of loyalty, these days? I have a sense that you’d know.”

Barnes laughed--it was easy to do so that morning, plump as he was with looted gold they’d gathered from Rogers’ ruined galleon, with the captain himself caught fast in his grasp. “You give me too much credit, sir. I had nothing to do with what befell you. Merely the good fortune of happening upon your ship while she and you still lived.”

Rogers stepped back and sagged against the bulkhead, looking for all the world as if he were about to fall to his knees. “Ah, hell.”

“Are you ill, captain?”

“Down to my very soul.” Rogers looked up again and this time, his gaze was haunted, his face all at once pale and dark. “Betrayal alone is hard enough to bear, but to not know the reason, not understand why? That I cannot stand.”

Barnes found his hand on the bars, found himself peering at his rival, now bested, but a shell of a man. “I’m sorry,” he said, to his own great surprise. “For all of enmity over the years, please know that I am. I can’t fathom all that you have lost.”

Rogers’ mouth twisted in an ill sort of smile. “Can’t you? I imagine you have some of what I’ve lost onboard.”

“I wasn’t speaking of gold, captain.”

The captain blinked at him and for a moment it seemed to Barnes that Rogers was seeing him, truly looking upon him, for the first time. “Steven,” the man said at last. “If you’re to hold me here, then I would appreciate it if you’d call me by my Christian name. I’ve little need for honorifics now.”

“Very well,” Barnes said magnanimously, feeling a little shiver of triumph. “Steven it is.”

It had become evident quickly that the cell itself was no place to keep a man--not if one’s goal was for said man to survive and thrive while in captivity; enough at least so the next time the _Fidélité_ made land, he could be successfully bartered with rivals for food stuffs or ship repairs or perhaps even gold.

“Captain,” the ship’s doctor, Barton, said, “Rogers is fairing no better. You must find a place for him above decks.”

Barnes sighed. “Where would you suggest? Shall I have him bunk with the men so that he might stab them in the night?”

“Sir, Captain Rogers is no position to stab anybody. I rather doubt at this moment that he’s capable of holding the knife.”

Barnes crossed his arms and turned away from the sea. “The galley, then? Or perhaps we can simply lash him to the mast.”

“No, sir,” Barton said. “I’d suggest we install him with you.”

“What?”

“In your cabin, sir. There is sufficient space. Were you to relocate your charts to the bridge and your sextant to the--”

Barnes cut him off. “I see,” he snapped. “You wish for Rogers to murder me instead of my men. How reasonable of you.”

Barton made an irritated sound. “Pah. He’ll do no such thing.”

“He’s a tiger, doctor, and a fierce one at that. You can’t tell me that one defeat, however ignoble, has deprived him of his teeth.”

“Let me put it this way,” Barton said fiercely, his manners falling by the wayside, his finger catching the captain in the chest, “if you keep him down there much longer, he’ll find a way to wither down to nothing and die. He's in shock still, and wounded, and left unattended, he’ll soon be worth nothing and you’ll have committed the cardinal sin, sir, of wasting my goddamn time. You want him to be worth something to you, to all of us? Then give the word and I’ll set up a second bunk in your quarters; he’ll be moved in my dinner time. And I for one will sleep better knowing that you’ve chosen to protect our greatest asset rather than your own goddamn pride. Sir.”

Barnes set his jaw. Never let it be said he ignored sound advice, no matter how much it pained him. “Fine. See that it’s done.”

He’d stayed out of his rooms as long as he could that night, lingering at the officers’ table, walking the length of the ship several more times as evening fell than he usually did, but when a last the call his own exhaustion was too much to ignore, he had slipped down the short stairs and into the cabin that was no longer just his.

Rogers had been installed near the porthole, in place of the tangle of charts that it was Barnes’ habit to keep always within an arm’s reach. There was room enough to move about, barely, and from his own bunk, Steven’s bed was visible; better still, he realized, he would lay between Rogers and the door, so should the captain get any ideas about escaping in the night, he’d have to get by Barnes first.

He freed himself from his coat and strode over to the cot where Rogers lay supine, apparently asleep. His hands were folded haphazard over his chest and his head was thrown back, the long, scruffy line of his throat thus revealed. He was, Barnes thought with amusement, as much in need of a shave as he was a bath, and oh, how that must rankle him; in their previous encounters, Rogers had always struck him as such a fastidious beast.

“Are you staring at me for a reason?”

Barnes jumped straight up. “Christ!”

Steven opened one sleepy eye and smiled, a pale shimmer of a thing. “It’s not polite, you know. Especially staring at the dozing infirm.”

“I was merely cataloguing your indignities," Barnes said, reaching back towards haughty. “You need a bath. And a clean kit. I’ll have the doctor attend to you in the morning.”

“Mmmm,” Steven said, his lid sliding closed. “As you like.”

That night, Barnes had slept poorly, one eye on the captain, one hand curled around his favorite dagger, poised and ready to strike should Rogers rise to attack him during the night.

He did no such thing, much to Barnes’ surprise. On that evening or any other. Indeed, as the days passed and the color returned to Steven’s now clean-shaven cheeks, he seemed more and more settled onboard the _Fidélité_ , more at ease with the circumstances of his strange new life.

For Barnes, though, the passage of time had the opposite effect: the longer that Rogers lingered--in his rooms, in his thoughts, two feet from his own bed--the more uncertain the captain became.


End file.
